3)2.63 


\a  B.CU 


R.  H.  D. 


Of  this  book  three  hundred  and  seventy-five 
copies  have  been  printed  from  type  and  the 
type  distributed. 


This  is  No. 


R.  H.  D. 


If 


APPRECIATIONS  OF  RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

MGMXVII 


Copyright  1916,  1917 
By  Charles  Scnbner's  Son-s 


APPRECIATIONS 


Gouverneur  Morris       .......  1 

Booth  Tarkington    ........  23 

Charles  Dana  Gibson    .......  29 

E.  L.  Burlingame     ........  33 

Augustus  Thomas    ........  39 

Theodore  Roosevelt      .......  53 

Irvin  S.  Cobb     .........  57 

John  Fox,  Jr  ..........  61 

Finley  Peter  Dunne      .......  69 

Winston  Churchill   ........  77 

Leonard  Wood    .........  83 

John  T.  McCutcheon  89 


R.  H.  D. 
BY  GOUVERNEUR  MORRIS 

"And  they  rise  to  their  feet  as  He  passes  by,  gentlemen  unafraid." 


, 


HE  was  almost  too  good  to  be  true.  In 
addition,  the  gods  loved  him,  and  so  he  had 
to  die  young.  Some  people  think  that  a 
man  of  fifty-two  is  middle-aged.  But  if 
R.  H.  D.  had  lived  to  be  a  hundred,  he  would 
never  have  grown  old.  It  is  not  generally 
known  that  the  name  of  his  other  brother 
was  Peter  Pan. 

Within  the  year  we  have  played  at  pirates 
together,  at  the  taking  of  sperm  whales; 
and  we  have  ransacked  the  Westchester 
Hills  for  gunsites  against  the  Mexican  in 
vasion.  And  we  have  made  lists  of  guns, 
and  medicines,  and  tinned  things,  in  case  we 
should  ever  happen  to  go  elephant-shooting 
in  Africa.  But  we  weren't  going  to  hurt  the 
elephants.  Once  R.  H.  D.  shot  a  hippo 
potamus  and  he  was  always  ashamed  and 
sorry.  I  think  he  never  killed  anything 
else.  He  wasn't  that  kind  of  a  sportsman. 
Of  hunting,  as  of  many  other  things,  he  has 
said  the  last  word.  Do  you  remember  the 
Happy  Hunting  Ground  in  "The  Bar  Sin- 
[3] 


R.  H.  D. 

ister"P — "where  nobody  hunts  us,  and  there 
is  nothing  to  hunt." 

Experienced  persons  tell  us  that  a  man 
hunt  is  the  most  exciting  of  all  sports.  R. 
H.  D.  hunted  men  in  Cuba.  He  hunted  for 
wounded  men  who  were  out  in  front  of  the 
trenches  and  still  under  fire,  and  found  some 
of  them  and  brought  them  in.  The  Rough 
Riders  didn't  make  him  an  honorary  mem 
ber  of  their  regiment  just  because  he  was 
charming  and  a  faithful  friend,  but  largely 
because  they  were  a  lot  of  daredevils  and  he 
was  another. 

To  hear  him  talk  you  wouldn't  have 
thought  that  he  had  ever  done  a  brave  thing 
in  his  life.  He  talked  a  great  deal,  and  he 
talked  even  better  than  he  wrote  (at  his 
best  he  wrote  like  an  angel),  but  I  have  dusted 
every  corner  of  my  memory  and  cannot  re 
call  any  story  of  his  in  which  he  played  a 
heroic  or  successful  part.  Always  he  was 
running  at  top  speed,  or  hiding  behind  a 
tree,  or  lying  face  down  in  a  foot  of  water 
(for  hours!)  so  as  not  to  be  seen.  Always 
[4] 


R.  H.  D. 

he  was  getting  the  worst  of  it.  But  about 
the  other  fellows  he  told  the  whole  truth 
with  lightning  flashes  of  wit  and  character 
building  and  admiration  or  contempt.  Un 
til  the  invention  of  moving  pictures  the 
world  had  nothing  in  the  least  like  his  talk. 
His  eye  had  photographed,  his  mind  had 
developed  and  prepared  the  slides,  his  words 
sent  the  light  through  them,  and  lo  and  be 
hold,  they  were  reproduced  on  the  screen  of 
your  own  mind,  exact  in  drawing  and  color. 
With  the  written  word  or  the  spoken  word 
he  was  the  greatest  recorder  and  reporter  of 
things  that  he  had  seen  of  any  man,  perhaps, 
that  ever  lived.  The  history  of  the  last 
thirty  years,  its  manners  and  customs  and 
its  leading  events  and  inventions,  cannot  be 
written  truthfully  without  reference  to  the 
records  which  he  has  left,  to  his  special  ar 
ticles  and  to  his  letters.  Read  over  again 
the  Queen's  Jubilee,  the  Czar's  Coronation, 
the  March  of  the  Germans  through  Brussels, 
and  see  for  yourself  if  I  speak  too  zealously, 
even  for  a  friend,  to  whom,  now  that  R.  H.  D. 
[5] 


R.  H.  D. 

is  dead,  the  world  can  never  be  the  same 
again. 

But  I  did  not  set  out  to  estimate  his 
genius.  That  matter  will  come  in  due  time 
before  the  unerring  tribunal  of  posterity. 

One  secret  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  hold  upon 
those  who  come  into  contact  with  him  is  his 
energy.  Retaining  enough  for  his  own  use 
(he  uses  a  good  deal,  because  every  day  he 
does  the  work  of  five  or  six  men),  he  dis 
tributes  the  inexhaustible  remainder  among 
those  who  most  need  it.  Men  go  to  him 
tired  and  discouraged,  he  sends  them  away 
glad  to  be  alive,  still  gladder  that  he  is 
alive,  and  ready  to  fight  the  devil  himself 
in  a  good  cause.  Upon  his  friends  R.  H.  D. 
had  the  same  effect.  And  it  was  not  only 
in  proximity  that  he  could  distribute  en 
ergy,  but  from  afar,  by  letter  and  cable.  He 
had  some  intuitive  way  of  knowing  just  when 
you  were  slipping  into  a  slough  of  laziness 
and  discouragement.  And  at  such  times  he 
either  appeared  suddenly  upon  the  scene,  or 
there  came  a  boy  on  a  bicycle,  with  a  yellow 
[  6  1 


R.  H.  D. 

envelope  and  a  book  to  sign,  or  the  postman 
in  his  buggy,  or  the  telephone  rang  and  from 
the  receiver  there  poured  into  you  affection 
and  encouragement. 

But  the  great  times,  of  course,  were  when 
he  came  in  person,  and  the  temperature  of 
the  house,  which  a  moment  before  had  been 
too  hot  or  too  cold,  became  just  right,  and  a 
sense  of  cheerfulness  and  well-being  invaded 
the  hearts  of  the  master  and  the  mistress 
and  of  the  servants  in  the  house  and  in  the 
yard.  And  the  older  daughter  ran  to  him, 
and  the  baby,  who  had  been  fretting  because 
nobody  would  give  her  a  double-barrelled 
shotgun,  climbed  upon  his  knee  and  forgot 
all  about  the  disappointments  of  this  uncom 
promising  world. 

He  was  touchingly  sweet  with  children. 
I  think  he  was  a  little  afraid  of  them.  He 
was  afraid  perhaps  that  they  wouldn't  find 
out  how  much  he  loved  them.  But  when 
they  showed  him  that  they  trusted  him,  and, 
unsolicited,  climbed  upon  him  and  laid  their 
cheeks  against  his,  then  the  loveliest  expres- 
[7] 


R.  H.  D. 

sion  came  over  his  face,  and  you  knew  that 
the  great  heart,  which  the  other  day  ceased 
to  beat,  throbbed  with  an  exquisite  bliss, 
akin  to  anguish. 

One  of  the  happiest  days  I  remember  was 
when  I  and  mine  received  a  telegram  saying 
that  he  had  a  baby  of  his  own.  And  I  thank 
God  that  little  Miss  Hope  is  too  young  to 
know  what  an  appalling  loss  she  has  suf 
fered.  .  .  . 

Perhaps  he  stayed  to  dine.  Then  perhaps 
the  older  daughter  was  allowed  to  sit  up  an 
extra  half -hour  so  that  she  could  wait  on  the 
table  (and  though  I  say  it,  that  shouldn't, 
she  could  do  this  beautifully,  with  dignity 
and  without  giggling),  and  perhaps  the  din 
ner  was  good,  or  R.  H.  D.  thought  it  was, 
and  in  that  event  he  must  abandon  his 
place  and  storm  the  kitchen  to  tell  the  cook 
all  about  it.  Perhaps  the  gardener  was  tak 
ing  life  easy  on  the  kitchen  porch.  He,  too, 
came  in  for  praise.  R.  H.  D.  had  never  seen 
our  Japanese  iris  so  beautiful;  as  for  his, 
they  wouldn't  grow  at  all.  It  wasn't  the 
[8] 


R.  H.  D. 

iris,  it  was  the  man  behind  the  iris.  And 
then  back  he  would  come  to  us,  with  a  won 
derful  story  of  his  adventures  in  the  pantry 
on  his  way  to  the  kitchen,  and  leaving  be 
hind  him  a  cook  to  whom  there  had  been 
issued  a  new  lease  of  life,  and  a  gardener 
who  blushed  and  smiled  in  the  darkness 
under  the  Actinidia  vines. 

It  was  in  our  little  house  at  Aiken,  in 
South  Carolina,  that  he  was  with  us  most 
and  we  learned  to  know  him  best,  and  that 
he  and  I  became  dependent  upon  each  other 
in  many  ways. 

Events,  into  which  I  shall  not  go,  had 
made  his  life  very  difficult  and  complicated. 
And  he  who  had  given  so  much  friendship  to 
so  many  people  needed  a  little  friendship  in 
return,  and  perhaps,  too,  he  needed  for  a 
time  to  live  in  a  house  whose  master  and 
mistress  loved  each  other,  and  where  there 
were  children.  Before  he  came  that  first 
year  our  house  had  no  name.  Now  it  is 
called  "Let's  Pretend." 

Now  the  chimney  in  the  living-room  draws, 
[9] 


R.  H.  D. 

but  in  those  first  days  of  the  built-over 
house  it  didn't.  At  least,  it  didn't  draw  all 
the  time,  but  we  pretended  that  it  did,  and 
with  much  pretense  came  faith.  From  the 
fireplace  that  smoked  to  the  serious  things  of 
life  we  extended  our  pretendings,  until  real 
troubles  went  down  before  them — down  and 
out. 

It  was  one  of  Aiken's  very  best  winters, 
and  the  earliest  spring  I  ever  lived  anywhere. 
R.  H.  D.  came  shortly  after  Christmas. 
The  spiraeas  were  in  bloom,  and  the  monthly 
roses;  you  could  always  find  a  sweet  violet 
or  two  somewhere  in  the  yard;  here  and  there 
splotches  of  deep  pink  against  gray  cabin 
walls  proved  that  precocious  peach-trees 
were  in  bloom.  It  never  rained.  At  night 
it  was  cold  enough  for  fires.  In  the  middle 
of  the  day  it  was  hot.  The  wind  never  blew, 
and  every  morning  we  had  a  four  for  tennis 
and  every  afternoon  we  rode  in  the  woods. 
And  every  night  we  sat  in  front  of  the  fire 
(that  didn't  smoke  because  of  pretending) 
and  talked  until  the  next  morning. 
[  10  1 


R.  H.  D. 

He  was  one  of  those  rarely  gifted  men 
who  find  their  chief est  pleasure  not  in  looking 
backward  or  forward,  but  in  what  is  going 
on  at  the  moment.  Weeks  did  not  have  to 
pass  before  it  was  forced  upon  his  knowledge 
that  Tuesday,  the  fourteenth  (let  us  say), 
had  been  a  good  Tuesday.  He  knew  it  the 
moment  he  waked  at  7  A.  M.  and  perceived 
the  Tuesday  sunshine  making  patterns  of 
bright  light  upon  the  floor.  The  sunshine 
rejoiced  him  and  the  knowledge  that  even 
before  breakfast  there  was  vouchsafed  to 
him  a  whole  hour  of  life.  That  day  began 
with  attentions  to  his  physical  well-being. 
There  were  exercises,  conducted  with  great 
vigor  and  rejoicing,  followed  by  a  tub, 
artesian  cold,  and  a  loud  and  joyous  singing 
of  ballads. 

At  fifty  R.  H.  D.  might  have  posed  to 
some  Praxiteles  and,  copied  in  marble,  gone 
down  the  ages  as  "statue  of  a  young  ath 
lete."  He  stood  six  feet  and  over,  straight 
as  a  Sioux  chief,  a  noble  and  leonine  head 
carried  by  a  splendid  torso.  His  skin  was 
f  11  1 


R.  H.  D. 

as  fine  and  clean  as  a  child's.  He  weighed 
nearly  two  hundred  pounds  and  had  no  fat 
on  him.  He  was  the  weight-throwing  rather 
than  the  running  type  of  athlete,  but  so 
tenaciously  had  he  clung  to  the  suppleness  of 
his  adolescent  days  that  he  could  stand  stiff- 
legged  and  lay  his  hands  flat  upon  the  floor. 
The  singing  over,  silence  reigned.  But  if 
you  had  listened  at  his  door  you  must  have 
heard  a  pen  going,  swiftly  and  boldly.  He 
was  hard  at  work,  doing  unto  others  what 
others  had  done  unto  him.  You  were  a 
stranger  to  him;  some  magazine  had  ac 
cepted  a  story  that  you  had  written  and 
published  it.  R.  H.  D.  had  found  something 
to  like  and  admire  in  that  story  (very  little 
perhaps),  and  it  was  his  duty  and  pleasure 
to  tell  you  so.  If  he  had  liked  the  story  very 
much  he  would  send  you  instead  of  a  note  a 
telegram.  Or  it  might  be  that  you  had 
drawn  a  picture,  or,  as  a  cub  reporter,  had 
shown  golden  promise  in  a  half-column  of 
unsigned  print;  R.  H.  D.  would  find  you 
out,  and  find  time  to  praise  you  and  help 
[12] 


R.  H.  D. 

you.  So  it  was  that  when  he  emerged  from 
his  room  at  sharp  eight  o'clock,  he  was  wide 
awake  and  happy  and  hungry,  and  whistled 
and  double-shuffled  with  his  feet,  out  of 
excessive  energy,  and  carried  in  his  hands  a 
whole  sheaf  of  notes  and  letters  and  tele 
grams. 

Breakfast  with  him  was  not  the  usual 
American  breakfast,  a  sullen,  dyspeptic  gath 
ering  of  persons  who  only  the  night  before 
had  rejoiced  in  each  other's  society.  With 
him  it  was  the  time  when  the  mind  is,  or 
ought  to  be,  at  its  best,  the  body  at  its 
freshest  and  hungriest.  Discussions  of  the 
latest  plays  and  novels,  the  doings  and  un 
doings  of  statesmen,  laughter  and  sentiment 
—to  him,  at  breakfast,  these  things  were  as 
important  as  sausages  and  thick  cream. 

Breakfast  over,  there  was  no  dawdling 
and  putting  off  of  the  day's  work  (else  how, 
at  eleven  sharp,  could  tennis  be  played  with 
a  free  conscience?).  Loving,  as  he  did,  ev 
erything  connected  with  a  newspaper,  he 
would  now  pass  by  those  on  the  hall-table 
[  13  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

with  never  so  much  as  a  wistful  glance,  and 
hurry  to  his  workroom. 

He  wrote  sitting  down.  He  wrote  standing 
up.  And,  almost  you  may  say,  he  wrote 
walking  up  and  down.  Some  people,  ac 
customed  to  the  delicious  ease  and  clarity 
of  his  style,  imagine  that  he  wrote  very 
easily.  He  did  and  he  didn't.  Letters,  easy, 
clear,  to  the  point,  and  gorgeously  human, 
flowed  from  him  without  let  or  hindrance. 
That  masterpiece  of  corresponding,  "The 
German  March  through  Brussels,"  was  prob 
ably  written  almost  as  fast  as  he  could 
talk  (next  to  Phillips  Brooks  he  was  the 
fastest  talker  I  ever  heard),  but  when  it 
came  to  fiction  he  had  no  facility  at  all. 
Perhaps  I  should  say  that  he  held  in  con 
tempt  any  facility  that  he  may  have  had. 
It  was  owing  to  his  incomparable  energy 
and  Joblike  patience  that  he  ever  gave  us 
any  fiction  at  all.  Every  phrase  in  his  fiction 
was,  of  all  the  myriad  phrases  he  could  think 
of,  the  fittest  in  his  relentless  judgment  to 
survive.  Phrases,  paragraphs,  pages,  whole 
[14] 


R.  H.  D. 

stories  even,  were  written  over  and  over 
again.  He  worked  upon  a  principle  of 
elimination.  If  he  wished  to  describe  an 
automobile  turning  in  at  a  gate,  he  made 
first  a  long  and  elaborate  description  from 
which  there  was  omitted  no  detail  which  the 
most  observant  pair  of  eyes  in  Christen 
dom  had  ever  noted  with  reference  to  just 
such  a  turning.  Thereupon  he  would  begin 
a  process  of  omitting  one  by  one  those  de 
tails  which  he  had  been  at  such  pains  to 
recall;  and  after  each  omission  he  would 
ask  himself:  "Does  the  picture  remain?" 
If  it  did  not,  he  restored  the  detail  which 
he  had  just  omitted,  and  experimented  with 
the  sacrifice  of  some  other,  and  so  on,  and 
so  on,  until  after  Herculean  labor  there  re 
mained  for  the  reader  one  of  those  swiftly 
flashed,  ice-clear  pictures  (complete  in  every 
detail)  with  which  his  tales  and  romances 
are  so  delightfully  and  continuously  adorned. 
But  it  is  quarter  to  eleven,  and,  this  being 
a  time  of  holiday,  R.  H.  D.  emerges  from  his 
workroom  happy  to  think  that  he  has  placed 
[15] 


R.  H.  D. 

one  hundred  and  seven  words  between  him 
self  and  the  wolf  who  hangs  about  every 
writer's  door.  He  isn't  satisfied  with  those 
hundred  and  seven  words.  He  never  was 
in  the  least  satisfied  with  anything  that  he 
wrote,  but  he  has  searched  his  mind  and 
his  conscience  and  he  believes  that  under  the 
circumstances  they  are  the  very  best  that 
he  can  do.  Anyway,  they  can  stand  in  their 
present  order  until — after  lunch. 

A  sign  of  his  youth  was  the  fact  that  to 
the  day  of  his  death  he  had  denied  himself 
the  luxury  and  slothfulness  of  habits.  I 
have  never  seen  him  smoke  automatically  as 
most  men  do.  He  had  too  much  respect  for 
his  own  powers  of  enjoyment  and  for  the 
sensibilities,  perhaps,  of  the  best  Havana 
tobacco.  At  a  time  of  his  own  deliberate 
choosing,  often  after  many  hours  of  hanker 
ing  and  renunciation,  he  smoked  his  cigar. 
He  smoked  it  with  delight,  with  a  sense  of 
being  rewarded,  and  he  used  all  the  smoke 
there  was  in  it. 

He  dearly  loved  the  best  food,  the  best 
[  16  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

champagne,  and  the  best  Scotch  whiskey. 
But  these  things  were  friends  to  him,  and 
not  enemies.  He  had  toward  food  and 
drink  the  Continental  attitude;  namely, 
that  quality  is  far  more  important  than 
quantity;  and  he  got  his  exhilaration  from 
the  fact  that  he  was  drinking  champagne 
and  not  from  the  champagne.  Perhaps  I 
shall  do  well  to  say  that  on  questions  of  right 
and  wrong  he  had  a  will  of  iron.  All  his  life 
he  moved  resolutely  in  whichever  direction 
his  conscience  pointed;  and,  although  that 
ever  present  and  never  obtrusive  conscience 
of  his  made  mistakes  of  judgment  now  and 
then,  as  must  all  consciences,  I  think  it  can 
never  once  have  tricked  him  into  any  action 
that  was  impure  or  unclean.  Some  critics 
maintain  that  the  heroes  and  heroines  of 
his  books  are  impossibly  pure  and  innocent 
young  people.  R.  H.  D.  never  called  upon 
his  characters  for  any  trait  of  virtue,  or  re 
nunciation,  or  self-mastery  of  which  his  own 
life  could  not  furnish  examples. 

Fortunately,  he  did  not  have  for  his  friends 
[  17] 


R.  H.  D. 

the  same  conscience  that  he  had  for  himself. 
His  great  gift  of  eyesight  and  observation 
failed  him  in  his  judgments  upon  his  friends. 
If  only  you  loved  him,  you  could  get  your 
biggest  failures  of  conduct  somewhat  more 
than  forgiven,  without  any  trouble  at  all. 
And  of  your  mole-hill  virtues  he  made 
splendid  mountains.  He  only  interfered 
with  you  when  he  was  afraid  that  you  were 
going  to  hurt  some  one  else  whom  he  also 
loved.  Once  I  had  a  telegram  from  him 
which  urged  me  for  heaven's  sake  not  to 
forget  that  the  next  day  was  my  wife's  birth 
day.  Whether  I  had  forgotten  it  or  not  is 
my  own  private  affair.  And  when  I  declared 
that  I  had  read  a  story  which  I  liked  very, 
very  much  and  was  going  to  write  to  the 
author  to  tell  him  so,  he  always  kept  at  me 
till  the  letter  was  written. 

Have  I  said  that  he  had  no  habits  ?  Every 
day,  when  he  was  away  from  her,  he  wrote  a 
letter  to  his  mother,  and  no  swift  scrawl  at 
that,  for,  no  matter  how  crowded  and  event 
ful  the  day,  he  wrote  her  the  best  letter  that 
[  18] 


R.  H.  D. 

he  could  write.  That  was  the  only  habit  he 
had.  He  was  a  slave  to  it. 

Once  I  saw  R.  H.  D.  greet  his  old  mother 
after  an  absence.  They  threw  their  arms 
about  each  other  and  rocked  to  and  fro  for 
a  long  time.  And  it  hadn't  been  a  long  ab 
sence  at  that.  No  ocean  had  been  between 
them;  her  heart  had  not  been  in  her  mouth 
with  the  thought  that  he  was  under  fire,  or 
about  to  become  a  victim  of  jungle  fever. 
He  had  only  been  away  upon  a  little  ex 
pedition,  a  mere  matter  of  digging  for  buried 
treasure.  We  had  found  the  treasure,  part 
of  it  a  chipmunk's  skull  and  a  broken  arrow 
head,  and  R.  H.  D.  had  been  absent  from 
his  mother  for  nearly  two  hours  and  a  half. 

I  set  about  this  article  with  the  knowl 
edge  that  I  must  fail  to  give  more  than  a 
few  hints  of  what  he  was  like.  There  isn't 
much  more  space  at  my  command,  and  there 
were  so  many  sides  to  him  that  to  touch 
upon  them  all  would  fill  a  volume.  There 
were  the  patriotism  and  the  Americanism, 
as  much  a  part  of  him  as  the  marrow  of  his 
[  19  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

bones,  and  from  which  sprang  all  those 
brilliant  headlong  letters  to  the  newspapers: 
those  trenchant  assaults  upon  evil-doers  in 
public  office,  those  quixotic  efforts  to  redress 
wrongs,  and  those  simple  and  dexterous  ex 
posures  of  this  and  that,  from  an  absolutely 
unexpected  point  of  view.  He  was  a  quick- 
ener  of  the  public  conscience.  That  people 
are  beginning  to  think  tolerantly  of  pre 
paredness,  that  a  nation  which  at  one  time 
looked  yellow  as  a  dandelion  is  beginning  to 
turn  Red,  White,  and  Blue  is  owing  in  some 
measure  to  him. 

R.  H.  D.  thought  that  war  was  unspeak 
ably  terrible.  He  thought  that  peace  at  the 
price  which  our  country  has  been  forced  to 
pay  for  it  was  infinitely  worse.  And  he  was 
one  of  those  who  have  gradually  taught  this 
country  to  see  the  matter  in  the  same  way. 

I  must  come  to  a  close  now,  and  I  have 
hardly  scratched  the  surface  of  my  subject. 
And  that  is  a  failure  which  I  feel  keenly  but 
which  was  inevitable.  As  R.  H.  D.  himself 
used  to  say  of  those  deplorable  "personal 
[  20  1 


R.  H.  D. 

interviews"  which  appear  in  the  newspapers, 
and  in  which  the  important  person  inter 
viewed  is  made  by  the  cub  reporter  to  say 
things  which  he  never  said,  or  thought,  or 
dreamed  of— "You  can't  expect  a  fifteen- 
dollar-a-week  brain  to  describe  a  thousand- 
dollar-a-week  brain." 

There  is,  however,  one  question  which  I 
should  attempt  to  answer.  No  two  men  are 
alike.  In  what  one  salient  thing  did  R.  H. 
D.  differ  from  other  men — differ  in  his  per 
sonal  character  and  in  the  character  of  his 
work?  And  that  question  I  can  answer  off 
hand,  without  taking  thought,  and  be  sure 
that  I  am  right. 

An  analysis  of  his  works,  a  study  of  that 
book  which  the  Recording  Angel  keeps  will 
show  one  dominant  characteristic  to  which 
even  his  brilliancy,  his  clarity  of  style,  his 
excellent  mechanism  as  a  writer  are  subor 
dinate;  and  to  which,  as  a  man,  even  his 
sense  of  duty,  his  powers  of  affection,  of  for 
giveness,  of  loving-kindness  are  subordinate, 
too;  and  that  characteristic  is  cleanliness. 
[21  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

The  biggest  force  for  cleanliness  that  was 
in  the  world  has  gone  out  of  the  world- 
gone  to  that  Happy  Hunting  Ground  where 
"Nobody  hunts  us  and  there  is  nothing  to 
hunt." 


[22 


BY  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 


To  the  college  boy  of  the  early  nineties 
Richard  Harding  Davis  was  the  "beau  ideal 
of  jeunesse  doree"  a  sophisticated  heart  of 
gold.  He  was  of  that  college  boy's  own  age, 
but  already  an  editor — already  publishing 
books  I  His  stalwart  good  looks  were  as 
familiar  to  us  as  were  those  of  our  own  foot 
ball  captain;  we  knew  his  face  as  we  knew 
the  face  of  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  but  we  infinitely  preferred  Da  vis's. 
When  the  Waldorf  was  wondrously  com 
pleted,  and  we  cut  an  exam,  in  Cuneiform 
Inscriptions  for  an  excursion  to  see  the  world 
at  lunch  in  its  new  magnificence,  and  Rich 
ard  Harding  Davis  came  into  the  Palm 
Room — then,  oh,  then,  our  day  was  radi 
ant!  That  was  the  top  of  our  fortune:  we 
could  never  have  hoped  for  so  much.  Of  ah1 
the  great  people  of  every  continent,  this  was 
the  one  we  most  desired  to  see. 

The  boys  of  those  days  left  college  to 
work,  to  raise  families,  to  grow  grizzled; 
but  the  glamour  remained  about  Davis;  he 
[25] 


R.  H.  D. 

never  grew  grizzled.  Youth  was  his  great 
quality. 

All  his  writing  has  the  liveliness  of  spring 
time;  it  stirs  with  an  unsuppressible  gayety, 
and  it  has  the  attraction  which  companion 
ship  with  him  had:  there  is  never  enough. 
He  could  be  sharp;  he  could  write  angrily 
and  witheringly;  but  even  when  he  was 
fiercest  he  was  buoyant,  and  when  his 
words  were  hot  they  were  not  scalding  but 
rather  of  a  dry,  clean  indignation  with 
things  which  he  believed  could,  if  they 
would,  be  better.  He  never  saw  evil  but  as 
temporary. 

Following  him  through  his  books,  whether 
he  wrote  of  home  or  carried  his  kind,  stout 
heart  far,  far  afield,  we  see  an  American 
writing  to  Americans.  He  often  told  us 
about  things  abroad  in  terms  of  New  York; 
and  we  have  all  been  to  New  York,  so  he 
made  for  us  the  pictures  he  wished  us  to 
see.  And  when  he  did  not  thus  use  New 
York  for  his  colors  he  found  other  means 
as  familiar  to  us  and  as  suggestive;  he  al- 
[  26  1 


R.  H.  D. 

ways  made  us  see.  What  claims  our  thanks 
in  equal  measure,  he  knew  our  kind  of 
curiosity  so  well  that  he  never  failed  to  make 
us  see  what  we  were  most  anxious  to  see. 
He  knew  where  our  dark  spots  were,  cleared 
up  the  field  of  vision,  and  left  us  unconfused. 
This  discernment  of  our  needs,  and  this 
power  of  enlightening  and  pleasuring  his 
reader,  sprang  from  seeds  native  in  him. 
They  were,  as  we  say,  gifts;  for  he  always 
had  them  but  did  not  make  them.  He  was 
a  national  figure  at  twenty-three.  He  knew 
how,  before  he  began. 

Youth  called  to  youth:  all  ages  read  him, 
but  the  young  men  and  young  women  have 
turned  to  him  ever  since  his  precocious  fame 
made  him  their  idol.  They  got  many  things 
from  him,  but  above  all  they  live  with  a 
happier  bravery  because  of  him.  Reading 
the  man  beneath  the  print,  they  found  their 
prophet  and  gladly  perceived  that  a  prophet 
is  not  always  cowled  and  bearded,  but  may 
be  a  gallant  young  gentleman.  This  one 
called  merrily  to  them  in  his  manly  voice; 
[27] 


R.  H.  D. 

and  they  followed  him.    He  bade  them  see 
that  pain  is  negligible,  that  fear  is  a  joke, 
and  that  the  world  is  poignantly  interest 
ing,  joyously  lovable. 
They  will  always  follow  him. 


[28 


THE  FIRST  GLIMPSE  OF  DAVIS 
BY  CHARLES   DANA  GIBSON 


DICK  was  twenty-four  years  old  when  he 
came  into  the  smoking-room  of  the  Victoria 
Hotel,  in  London,  after  midnight  one  July 
night — he  was  dressed  as  a  Thames  boat 
man. 

He  had  been  rowing  up  and  down  the  river 
since  sundown,  looking  for  color.  He  had 
evidently  peopled  every  dark  corner  with  a 
pirate,  and  every  floating  object  had  meant 
something  to  him.  He  had  adventure  writ 
ten  all  over  him.  It  was  the  first  time  I 
had  ever  seen  him,  and  I  had  never  heard 
of  him.  I  can't  now  recall  another  figure  in 
that  smoke-filled  room.  I  don't  remember 
who  introduced  us — over  twenty-seven  years 
have  passed  since  that  night.  But  I  can  see 
Dick  now  dressed  in  a  rough  brown  suit,  a 
soft  hat,  with  a  handkerchief  about  his  neck, 
a  splendid,  healthy,  clean-minded,  gifted 
boy  at  play.  And  so  he  always  remained. 

His  going  out  of  this  world  seemed  like  a 
boy  interrupted  in  a  game  he  loved.  And 
how  well  and  fairly  he  played  it !  Surely  no 
[31  1 


R.  H.  D. 

one  deserved  success  more  than  Dick.  And 
it  is  a  consolation  to  know  he  had  more 
than  fifty  years  of  just  what  he  wanted. 
He  had  health,  a  great  talent,  and  personal 
charm.  There  never  was  a  more  loyal  or 
unselfish  friend.  There  wasn't  an  atom  of 
envy  in  him.  He  had  unbounded  mental 
and  physical  courage,  and  with  it  all  he  was 
sensitive  and  sometimes  shy.  He  often  tried 
to  conceal  these  last  two  qualities,  but  never 
succeeded  in  doing  so  from  those  of  us  who 
were  privileged  really  to  know  and  love 
him. 

His  life  was  filled  with  just  the  sort  of 
adventure  he  liked  the  best.  No  one  ever 
saw  more  wars  in  so  many  different  places 
or  got  more  out  of  them.  And  it  took  the 
largest  war  in  all  history  to  wear  out  that 
stout  heart. 

We  shall  miss  him. 


32 


BY   E.  L.  BURLINGAME 


ONE  of  the  most  attractive  and  inspiring 
things  about  Richard  Harding  Davis  was 
the  simple,  almost  matter-of-course  way  in 
which  he  put  into  practice  his  views  of  life 
—in  which  he  acted,  and  in  fact  was,  what  he 
believed.  With  most  of  us,  to  have  opinions 
as  to  what  is  the  right  thing  to  do  is  at  the 
best  to  worry  a  good  deal  as  to  whether  we 
are  doing  it;  at  the  worst  to  be  conscious  of 
doubts  as  to  whether  it  is  a  sufficient  code,  or 
perhaps  whether  it  isn't  beyond  us.  Davis 
seemed  to  have  neither  of  these  wasters  of 
strength.  He  had  certain  simple,  clean, 
manly  convictions  as  to  how  a  man  should 
act;  apparently  quite  without  self-con 
sciousness  in  this  respect,  whatever  little 
mannerisms  or  points  of  pride  he  may  have 
had  in  others — fewer  than  most  men  of  his 
success  and  fastidiousness — he  went  ahead 
and  did  accordingly,  untormented  by  any 
alternatives  or  casuistries,  which  for  him  did 
not  seem  to  exist.  He  was  so  genuinely 
straightforward  that  he  could  not  sophisti- 
[35] 


R.  H.  D. 

cate  even  himself,  as  almost  every  man  oc 
casionally  does  under  temptation.  He,  at 
least,  never  needed  to  be  told 

"  Go  put  your  creed  into  your  deed 
Nor  speak  with  double  tongue." 

I  I  >  f  *    ' '  %    ) '       •     '     »  '<     \'i\     i  >  I  ',  '<  i        *  i    •    <  "  >  •       '     • 

It  is  so  impossible  not  to  think  first  of 
the  man,  as  the  testimony  of  every  one  who 
knew  him  shows,  that  those  who  have  long 
had  occasion  to  watch  and  follow  his  work, 
not  merely  with  enjoyment  but  somewhat 
critically,  may  well  look  upon  any  detailed 
discussion  of  it  as  something  to  be  kept  till 
later.  But  there  is  more  to  be  said  than  to 
recall  the  unfailing  zest  of  it,  the  extraor 
dinary  freshness  of  eye,  the  indomitable 
youthfulness  and  health  of  spirit — all  the 
qualities  that  we  associate  with  Davis  him 
self.  It  was  serious  work  in  a  sense  that  only 
the  more  thoughtful  of  its  critics  had  begun 
of  late  to  comprehend.  It  had  not  inspired 
a  body  of  disciples  like  Kipling's,  but  it  had 
helped  to  clear  the  air  and  to  give  a  new 
proof  of  the  vitality  of  certain  ideals — even 
[36] 


R.  H.  D. 

of  a  few  of  the  simpler  ones  now  outmoded 
in  current  masterpieces;  and  it  was  at  its  best 
far  truer  in  an  artistic  sense  than  it  was  the 
fashion  of  its  easy  critics  to  allow.  Whether 
Davis  could  or  would  have  written  a  novel 
of  the  higher  rank  is  a  useless  question  now ; 
he  himself,  who  was  a  critic  of  his  own  work 
without  illusions  or  affectation,  used  to  say 
that  he  could  not;  but  it  is  certain  that  in 
the  early  part  of  "Captain  Macklin"  he 
displayed  a  power  really  Thackerayan  in 
kind. 

Of  his  descriptive  writing  there  need  be 
no  fear  of  speaking  with  extravagance;  he 
had  made  himself,  especially  in  his  later 
work,  through  long  practice  and  his  inborn 
instinct  for  the  significant  and  the  fresh  as 
pect,  quite  the  best  of  all  contemporary  cor 
respondents  and  reporters;  and  his  rivals 
in  the  past  could  be  easily  numbered. 


37 


BY  AUGUSTUS  THOMAS 


ONE  spring  afternoon  in  1889  a  member 
brought  into  the  Lambs  Club  house — then 
on  Twenty-sixth  Street — as  a  guest  Mr. 
Richard  Harding  Davis.  I  had  not  clearly 
caught  the  careless  introduction,  and,  an 
swering  my  question,  Mr.  Davis  repeated 
the  surname.  He  did  not  pronounce  it  as 
would  a  Middle  Westerner  like  myself,  but 
more  as  a  citizen  of  London  might.  To 
spell  his  pronunciation  Dyvis  is  to  burlesque 
it  slightly,  but  that  is  as  near  as  it  can 
be  given  phonetically.  Several  other  words 
containing  a  long  a  were  sounded  by  him 
in  the  same  way,  and  to  my  ear  the  rest  of 
his  speech  had  a  related  eccentricity.  I  am 
told  that  other  men  educated  hi  certain 
Philadelphia  schools  have  a  similar  diction, 
but  at  that  time  many  of  Mr.  Davis's 
new  acquaintances  thought  the  manner  was 
an  affectation.  I  mention  the  peculiarity, 
which  after  years  convinced  me  was  as 
native  to  him  as  was  the  color  of  his  eyes, 
[41  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

because  I  am  sure  that  it  was  a  barrier  be 
tween  him  and  some  persons  who  met  him 
only  casually. 

At  that  time  he  was  a  reporter  on  a  Phila 
delphia  newspaper,  and  in  appearance  was 
what  he  continued  to  be  until  his  death,  an 
unassertive  but  self-respecting,  level-eyed, 
clean-toothed,  and  wholesome  athlete. 

The  reporter  developed  rapidly  into  the 
more  serious  workman,  and  amongst  the 
graver  business  was  that  of  war  correspon 
dent. 

I  have  known  fraternally  several  war  cor 
respondents — Dick  Davis,  Fred  Remington, 
John  Fox,  Caspar  Whitney,  and  others — 
and  it  seems  to  me  that,  while  differing  one 
from  another  as  average  men  differ,  they 
had  in  common  a  kind  of  veteran  superior 
ity  to  trivial  surprise,  a  tolerant  world  wis 
dom  that  mere  newspaper  work  in  other  de 
partments  does  not  bring.  At  any  rate,  and 
however  acquired,  Dick  Davis  had  the  qual 
ity.  And  with  that  seasoned  calm  he  kept 
and  cultivated  the  reporter  sense.  He  had 
[42] 


R.  H.  D. 

insight — the  faculty  of  going  back  of  ap 
pearances.  He  saw  the  potential  salients  in 
occurrences  and  easily  separated  them  from 
the  commonplace — and  the  commonplace  it 
self  when  it  was  informed  by  a  spirit  that 
made  it  helpful  did  not  mislead  him  by  its 
plainness. 

That  is  another  war-correspondent  qual 
ity.  He  saw  when  adherence  to  duty  ap 
proached  the  heroic.  He  knew  the  degree 
of  pressure  that  gave  it  test  conditions  and 
he  had  an  unadulterated,  plain,  bread-and- 
water  appreciation  of  it. 

I  think  that  fact  shows  in  his  stories. 
He  liked  enthusiastically  to  write  of  men 
doing  men's  work  and  doing  it  man  fashion 
with  full-blooded  optimism. 

At  his  very  best  he  was  in  heart  and  mind 
a  boy  grown  tall.  He  had  a  boy's  undis 
ciplined  indifference  to  great  personages  not 
inconsistent  with  his  admiration  of  their 
medals.  By  temperament  he  was  impulsive 
and  partisan,  and  if  he  was  your  friend  you 
were  right  until  you  were  obviously  very 
[43  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

wrong.  But  he  liked  "good  form,"  and  had 
adopted  the  Englishman's  code  of  "things 
no  fellow  could  do" — therefore  his  impul 
siveness  was  without  offense  and  his  partisan 
ship  was  not  quarrelsome. 

In  the  circumstance  of  this  story  of  "Sol 
diers  of  Fortune"  he  could  himself  have  been 
either  Clay  or  Stuart  and  he  had  the  humor  of 
MacWilliams. 

In  the  clash  between  Clay  and  Stuart, 
when  Clay  asks  the  younger  man  if  the 
poster  smirching  Stuart's  relation  to  Ma 
dame  Alvarez  is  true,  it  is  Davis  talking 
through  both  men,  and  when,  standing 
alone,  Clay  lifts  his  hat  and  addresses  the 
statue  of  General  Bolivar,  it  is  Davis  at  his 
best. 

Modern  criticism  has  driven  the  soliloquy 
from  the  theatre,  but  modern  criticism  in 
that  respect  is  immature  and  wrong.  The 
soliloquy  exists.  Any  one  observing  the 
number  of  business  men  who,  talking  aloud 
to  themselves,  walk  Fifth  Avenue  any  eve 
ning  may  prove  it.  For  Davis  the  soliloquy 
[44] 


R.  H.  D. 

was  not  courageous;  it  was  simply  true. 
And  that  was  a  place  for  it. 

When  "Soldiers  of  Fortune"  was  printed 
it  had  a  quick  and  a  deserved  popularity. 
It  was  cheerily  North  American  in  its  view 
point  of  the  sub-tropical  republics  and  was 
very  up  to  date.  The  outdoor  American 
girl  was  not  so  established  at  that  time,  and 
the  Davis  report  of  her  was  refreshing. 
Robert  Clay  was  unconsciously  Dick  Davis 
himself  as  he  would  have  tried  to  do — Cap 
tain  Stuart  was  the  English  officer  that 
Davis  had  met  the  world  over,  or,  closer 
still,  he  was  the  better  side  of  such  men 
which  the  attractive  wholesomeness  of  Davis 
would  draw  out.  Alice  and  King  were  the 
half-spoiled  New  Yorkers  as  he  knew  them 
at  the  dinner-parties. 

At  a  manager's  suggestion  Dick  made  a 
play  of  the  book.  It  was  his  first  attempt 
for  the  theatre  and  lacked  somewhat  the 
skill  that  he  developed  later  in  his  admirable 
"Dictator."  I  was  called  in  by  the  manager 
as  an  older  carpenter  and  craftsman  to  make 
[45] 


R.  H.  D. 

another  dramatic  version.  Dick  and  I 
were  already  friends  and  he  already  liked 
plays  that  I  had  done,  but  that  alone  could 
not  account  for  the  heartiness  with  which 
he  turned  over  to  me  his  material  and  elimi 
nated  himself.  Only  his  unspoiled  simplicity 
and  utter  absence  of  envy  could  do  that. 
Only  native  modesty  could  explain  the  ab 
sence  of  the  usual  author  pride  and  sensi 
tiveness.  The  play  was  immediately  suc 
cessful.  It  would  have  been  a  dull  hack, 
indeed,  who  could  have  spoiled  such  excel 
lent  stage  material  as  the  novel  furnished, 
but  his  generosity  saw  genius  in  the  dramatic 
extension  of  the  types  he  had  furnished  and 
in  the  welding  of  additions.  Even  after  en 
thusiasm  had  had  time  enough  to  cool,  he 
sent  me  a  first  copy  of  the  Playgoers'  edition 
of  the  novel,  printed  in  1902,  with  the  in 
scription: 

To  AUGUSTUS  THOMAS: 

Gratefully,  Admiringly,  Sincerely. 

RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS. 

f  46  1 


R.  H.  D. 

And  then,  as  if  feeling  the  formality  of 
the  names,  he  wrote  below: 

DEAR  Gus, 

If  you  liked  this  book  only  one-fifth  as  much 
as  I  like  your  play,  I  would  be  content  to  rest  on 
that  and  spare  the  public  any  others.  So  for  the 
sake  of  the  public  try  to  like  it.  DICK. 

In  19 1 4  a  motion-picture  company  ar 
ranged  to  make  a  feature  film  of  the  play, 
and  Dick  and  I  went  with  their  outfit  to 
Santiago  de  Cuba,  where,  twenty  years 
earlier,  he  had  found  the  inspiration  for  his 
story  and  out  of  which  city  and  its  environs 
he  had  fashioned  his  supposititious  republic 
of  Olancho.  On  that  trip  he  was  the  idol 
of  the  company.  With  the  men  in  the 
smoking-room  of  the  steamer  there  were 
the  numberless  playful  stories,  in  the  rough, 
of  the  experiences  on  all  five  continents  and 
seven  seas  that  were  the  backgrounds  of  his 
published  tales. 

At  Santiago,  if  an  official  was  to  be  per 
suaded  to  consent  to  some  unprecedented 
f  47  1 


R.  H.  D. 

seizure  of  the  streets,  or  a  diplomat  invoked 
for  the  assistance  of  the  Army  or  the  Navy, 
it  was  the  experience  and  good  judgment  of 
Dick  Davis  that  controlled  the  task.  In 
the  field  there  were  his  helpful  suggestions 
of  work  and  make-up  to  the  actors,  and  on 
the  boat  and  train  and  in  hotel  and  camp 
the  lady  members  met  in  him  an  easy 
courtesy  and  understanding  at  once  fra 
ternal  and  impersonal. 

That  picture  enterprise  he  has  described 
in  an  article,  entitled  "Breaking  into  the 
Movies,"  which  was  printed  in  Scribners 
Magazine. 

The  element  that  he  could  not  put  into 
the  account,  and  which  is  particularly  per 
tinent  to  this  page,  is  the  author  of  "Soldiers 
of  Fortune"  as  he  revealed  himself  to  me 
both  with  intention  and  unconsciously  in 
the  presence  of  the  familiar  scenes. 

For  three  weeks,  with  the  exception  of  one 

or  two  occasions  when  some  local  dignitary 

captured  the  revisiting  lion,  he  and  I  spent 

our  evenings  together  at  a  cafe  table  over- 

[48] 


R.  H.  D. 

looking  "the  great  square,"  which  he  sketches 
so  deftly  in  its  atmosphere  when  Clay  and 
the  Langhams  and  Stuart  dine  there:  "At 
one  end  of  the  plaza  the  President's  band 
was  playing  native  waltzes  that  came  throb 
bing  through  the  trees  and  beating  softly 
above  the  rustling  skirts  and  clinking  spurs 
of  the  senoritas  and  officers  sweeping  by  in 
two  opposite  circles  around  the  edges  of  the 
tessellated  pavements.  Above  the  palms 
around  the  square  arose  the  dim,  white 
fagade  of  the  Cathedral,  with  the  bronze 
statue  of  Anduella  the  liberator  of  Olancho, 
who  answered  with  his  upraised  arm  and 
cocked  hat  the  cheers  of  an  imaginary  pop 
ulace." 

Twenty  years  had  gone  by  since  Dick  had 
received  the  impression  that  wrote  those 
lines,  and  now  sometimes  after  dinner  half 
a  long  cigar  would  burn  out  as  he  mused 
over  the  picture  and  the  dreams  that  had 
gone  between.  From  one  long  silence  he 
said:  "I  think  I'll  come  back  here  this  winter 
and  bring  Mrs.  Davis  with  me — stay  a 
[49] 


R.  H.  D. 

couple  of  months."  What  a  fine  compli 
ment  to  a  wife  to  have  the  thought  of  her 
and  that  plan  emerge  from  that  deep  and 
romantic  background ! 

And  again,  later,  apropos  of  nothing  but 
what  one  guessed  from  the  dreamer's  ex 
pressive  face,  he  said:  "I  had  remembered 
it  as  so  much  larger" — indicating  the  square 

"until  I  saw  it  again  when  we  came  down 
with  the  army."  A  tolerant  smile — he  might 
have  explained  that  it  is  always  so  on  re 
visiting  scenes  that  have  impressed  us  deeply 
in  our  earlier  days,  but  he  let  the  smile  do 
that.  One  of  his  charms  as  companion  was 
that  restful  ability  not  to  talk  if  you  knew 
it,  too. 

The  picture  people  began  their  film  with 
a  showing  of  the  "mountains  which  jutted 
out  into  the  ocean  and  suggested  roughly 
the  five  knuckles  of  a  giant's  hand  clenched 
and  lying  flat  upon  the  surface  of  the  water." 
That  formation  of  the  sea  wall  is  just  out 
side  of  Santiago.  "The  waves  tunnelled 
their  way  easily  enough  until  they  ran  up 
[  50  1 


R.  H.  D. 

against  those  five  mountains  and  then  they 
had  to  fall  back."  How  natural  for  one  of 
us  to  be  unimpressed  by  such  a  feature  of 
the  landscape,  and  yet  how  characteristic 
of  Dick  Davis  to  see  the  elemental  fight 
that  it  recorded  and  get  the  hint  for  the 
whole  of  the  engineering  struggle  that  is  so 
much  of  his  book ! 

We  went  over  those  mountains  together, 
where  two  decades  before  he  had  planted 
his  banner  of  romance.  We  visited  the  mines 
and  the  railroads,  and  everywhere  found 
some  superintendent  or  foreman  or  engineer 
who  remembered  Davis.  He  had  guessed  at 
nothing.  Everywhere  he  had  overlaid  the 
facts  with  adventure  and  with  beauty,  but 
he  had  been  on  sure  footing  all  the  time. 
His  prototype  of  MacWilliams  was  dead. 
Together  we  visited  the  wooden  cross  with 
which  the  miners  had  marked  his  grave. 

One  is  tempted  to  go  choosing  through  his 
book  again  and  rob  its  surprises  by  reminis 
cence — but  I  refrain.  Yet  it  is  only  justice 
to  point  out  that  for  "Soldiers  of  Fortune," 
F51  1 


R.  H.  D. 

as  for  the  "Men  of  Zanzibar/'  "Three 
Gringos  in  Venezuela,"  "The  King's  Jackal," 
"Ranson's  Folly,"  and  his  other  books,  he 
got  his  structure  and  his  color  at  first  hand. 
He  was  a  writer  and  not  a  rewriter.  And 
another  thing  we  must  note  in  his  writing 
is  his  cleanliness.  It  is  safe  stuff  to  give  to 
a  young  fellow  who  likes  to  take  off  his  hat 
and  dilate  his  nostrils  and  feel  the  wind  in 
his  face.  Like  water  at  the  source,  it  is  un- 
defiled. 


52 


DAVIS  AND  THE  ROUGH  RIDERS 
BY  THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 


I  KNEW  Richard  Harding  Davis  for  many 
years,  and  I  was  among  the  number  who 
were  immediately  drawn  to  him  by  the 
power  and  originality  of  "Gallegher,"  the 
story  which  first  made  his  reputation. 

My  intimate  association  with  him,  how 
ever,  was  while  he  was  with  my  regiment 
in  Cuba.  He  joined  us  immediately  after 
landing,  and  was  not  merely  present  at  but 
took  part  in  the  fighting.  For  example,  at 
the  Guasimas  fight  it  was  he,  I  think,  with 
his  field-glasses,  who  first  placed  the  trench 
from  which  the  Spaniards  were  firing  at  the 
right  wing  of  the  regiment,  which  right  wing 
I,  at  that  time,  commanded.  We  were  then 
able  to  make  out  the  trench,  opened  fire  on 
it,  and  drove  out  the  Spaniards. 

He  was  indomitably  cheerful  under  hard 
ships  and  difficulties  and  entirely  indifferent 
to  his  own  personal  safety  or  comfort.  He 
so  won  the  esteem  and  regard  of  the  regi 
ment  that  he  was  one  of  the  three  men  we 
made  honorary  members  of  the  regiment's 
[55] 


R.  H.  D. 

association.    We  gave  him  the  same  medal 
worn  by  our  own  members. 

He  was  as  good  an  American  as  ever  lived 
and  his  heart  flamed  against  cruelty  and  in 
justice.  His  writings  form  a  text-book  of 
Americanism  which  all  our  people  would  do 
well  to  read  at  the  present  time. 


56   ] 


BY  IRVIN   S.   COBB 


ALMOST  the  first  letter  I  received  after  I 
undertook  to  make  a  living  by  writing  for 
magazines  was  signed  with  the  name  of 
Richard  Harding  Davis.  I  barely  knew  him; 
practically  we  were  strangers;  but  if  he  had 
been  my  own  brother  he  could  not  have 
written  more  generously  or  more  kindly  than 
he  did  write  in  that  letter.  He,  a  famous 
writer,  had  gone  out  of  his  way  to  speak 
words  of  encouragement  to  me,  an  unknown 
writer;  had  taken  the  time  and  the  pains 
out  of  a  busy  life  to  cheer  a  beginner  in  the 
field  where  he  had  had  so  great  a  measure 
of  success. 

When  I  came  to  know  him  better,  I  found 
out  that  such  acts  as  these  were  character 
istic  of  Richard  Harding  Davis.  The  world 
knew  him  as  one  of  the  most  vivid  and 
versatile  and  picturesque  writers  that  our 
country  has  produced  in  the  last  half-cen 
tury,  but  his  friends  knew  him  as  one  of  the 
kindest  and  gentlest  and  most  honest  and 
most  unselfish  of  men — a  real  human  being, 
f  59  1 


R.  H.  D. 

firm  in  his  convictions,  steadfast  in  his  af 
fections,  loyal  to  the  ideals  by  which  he  held, 
but  tolerant  always  in  his  estimates  of  others. 

He  may  or  may  not  have  been  a  born 
writer;  sometimes  I  doubt  whether  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  a  born  writer.  But  this 
much  I  do  know — he  was  a  born  gentleman 
if  ever  there  was  one. 

As  a  writer  his  place  is  assured.  But  al 
ways  I  shall  think  of  him  as  he  was  in  his 
private  life — a  typical  American,  a  lovable 
companion,  and  a  man  to  the  tips  of  his 
fingers. 


60 


BY  JOHN   FOX,  JR. 


DURING  the  twenty  years  that  I  knew 
him  Richard  Harding  Davis  was  always  go 
ing  to  some  far-off  land.  He  was  just  back 
from  a  trip  somewhere  when  I  first  saw  him 
in  his  rooms  in  New  York,  rifle  in  hand,  in 
his  sock  feet  and  with  his  traps  in  con 
fusion  about  him.  He  was  youth  incarnate 
—ruddy,  joyous,  vigorous,  adventurous,  self- 
confident  youth — and,  in  all  the  years  since, 
that  first  picture  of  him  has  suffered  no 
change  with  me.  He  was  so  intensely  alive 
that  I  cannot  think  of  him  as  dead — and  I 
do  not.  He  is  just  away  on  another  of  those 
trips  and  it  really  seems  queer  that  I  shall 
not  hear  him  tell  about  it. 

We  were  together  as  correspondents  in 
the  Spanish  War  and  in  the  Russo-Japanese 
War  we  were  together  again;  and  so  there 
is  hardly  any  angle  from  which  I  have  not 
had  the  chance  to  know  him.  No  man  was 
ever  more  misunderstood  by  those  who  did 
not  know  him  or  better  understood  by  those 
who  knew  him  well,  for  he  carried  nothing 
[63  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

in  the  back  of  his  head — no  card  that  was 
not  face  up  on  the  table.  Every  thought, 
idea,  purpose,  principle  within  him  was  for 
the  world  to  read  and  to  those  who  could 
not  know  how  rigidly  he  matched  his  inner 
and  outer  life  he  was  almost  unbelievable. 
He  was  exacting  in  friendship  because  his 
standard  was  high  and  because  he  gave 
what  he  asked;  and  if  he  told  you  of  a  fault 
he  told  you  first  of  a  virtue  that  made  the 
fault  seem  small  indeed.  But  he  told  you 
and  expected  you  to  tell  him. 

Naturally,  the  indirection  of  the  Japanese 
was  incomprehensible  to  him.  He  was  not 
good  at  picking  up  strange  tongues,  and  the 
Japanese  equivalent  for  the  Saxon  mono 
syllable  for  what  the  Japanese  was  to  him 
he  never  learned.  For  only  one  other  word 
did  he  have  more  use  and  I  believe  it  was 
the  only  one  he  knew,  "hyaku — hurry!" 
Over  there  I  was  in  constant  fear  for  him 
because  of  his  knight-errantry  and  his  can 
dor.  Once  he  came  near  being  involved  in  a 
duel  because  of  his  quixotic  championship  of 
f  64  1 


R.  H.  D. 

a  woman  whom  he  barely  knew,  and  disliked, 
and  whose  absent  husband  he  did  not  know 
at  all.  And  more  than  once  I  looked  for  a 
Japanese  to  draw  his  two-handed  ancestral 
sword  when  Dick  bluntly  demanded  a  recon 
ciliation  of  his  yea  of  yesterday  with  his  nay 
of  to-day.  Nine  months  passed  and  we 
never  heard  the  whistle  of  bullet  or  shell. 
Dick  called  himself  a  "cherry-blossom  cor 
respondent,"  and  when  our  ship  left  those 
shores  each  knew  that  the  other  went  to  his 
state-room  and  in  bitter  chagrin  and  dis 
appointment  wept  quite  childishly. 

Of  course,  he  was  courageous — absurdly 
so — and,  in  spite  of  his  high-strung  tempera 
ment,  always  calm  and  cool.  At  El  Paso 
hill,  the  day  after  the  fight,  the  rest  of  us 
scurried  for  tree-trunks  when  a  few  bullets 
whistled  near;  but  Dick  stalked  out  in  the 
open  and  with  his  field-glasses  searched  for 
the  supposed  sharpshooters  in  the  trees. 
Lying  under  a  bomb-proof  when  the  Fourth 
of  July  bombardment  started,  I  saw  Dick 
going  unhurriedly  down  the  hill  for  his 
[65] 


R.  H.  D. 

glasses,  which  he  had  left  in  Colonel  Roose 
velt's  tent,  and  unhurriedly  going  back  up 
to  the  trenches  again.  Under  the  circum 
stances  I  should  have  been  content  with  my 
naked  eye.  A  bullet  thudded  close  to  where 
Dick  lay  with  a  soldier. 

"That  hit  you?"  asked  Dick.  The  sol 
dier  grunted  "No,"  looked  sidewise  at  Dick, 
and  muttered  an  oath  of  surprise.  Dick  had 
not  taken  his  glasses  from  his  eyes.  I  saw 
him  writhing  on  the  ground  with  sciatica 
during  that  campaign,  like  a  snake,  but 
pulling  his  twisted  figure  straight  and  his 
tortured  face  into  a  smile  if  a  soldier  or 
stranger  passed. 

He  was  easily  the  first  reporter  of  his  time 
— perhaps  of  all  time.  Out  of  any  incident 
or  situation  he  could  pick  the  most  details 
that  would  interest  the  most  people  and  put 
them  in  a  way  that  was  pleasing  to  the  most 
people;  and  always,  it  seemed,  he  had  the 
extraordinary  good  judgment  or  the  extraor 
dinary  good  luck  to  be  just  where  the  most 
interesting  thing  was  taking  place. 
f  66  1 


R.  H.  D. 

Gouverneur  Morris  has  written  the  last 
word  about  Richard  Harding  Davis,  and  he, 
as  every  one  must,  laid  final  stress  on  the 
clean  body,  clean  heart,  and  clean  mind  of 
the  man.  R.  H.  D.  never  wrote  a  line  that 
cannot  be  given  to  his  little  daughter  when 
she  is  old  enough  to  read,  and  I  never  heard 
a  word  pass  his  lips  that  his  own  mother 
could  not  hear.  There  are  many  women 
in  the  world  like  the  women  in  his  books. 
There  are  a  few  men  like  the  men,  and  of 
these  Dick  himself  was  one. 


67] 


BY  FINLEY  PETER  DUNNE 


IN  the  articles  about  Mr.  Davis  that  have 
appeared  since  his  death,  the  personality  of 
the  man  seems  to  overshadow  the  merit  of 
the  author.  In  dealing  with  the  individual 
the  writers  overlook  the  fact  that  we  have 
lost  one  of  the  best  of  our  story-tellers. 
This  is  but  natural.  He  was  a  very  vivid 
kind  of  person.  He  had  thousands  of  friends 
in  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  a  properly 
proportionate  number  of  enemies,  and  those 
who  knew  him  were  less  interested  in  the 
books  than  in  the  man  himself — the  gen 
erous,  romantic,  sensitive  individual  whose 
character  and  characteristics  made  him  a 
conspicuous  figure  everywhere  he  went— 
and  he  went  everywhere.  His  books  were 
sold  in  great  numbers,  but  it  might  be  said 
in  terms  of  the  trade  that  his  personality 
had  a  larger  circulation  than  his  literature. 
He  probably  knew  more  waiters,  generals, 
actors,  and  princes  than  any  man  who  ever 
lived,  and  the  people  he  knew  best  are  not 
the  people  who  read  books.  They  write 
[71  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

them  or  are  a  part  of  them.  Besides,  if  you 
knew  Richard  Davis  you  knew  his  books. 
He  translated  himself  literally,  and  no  ex 
purgation  was  needed  to  make  the  transla 
tion  suitable  for  the  most  innocent  eyes.  He 
was  the  identical  chivalrous  young  Amer 
ican  or  Englishman  who  strides  through  his 
pages  in  battalions  to  romantic  death  or 
romantic  marriage.  Every  one  speaks  of 
the  extraordinary  youthfulness  of  his  mind, 
which  was  still  fresh  at  an  age  when  most 
men  find  avarice  or  golf  a  substitute  for 
former  pastimes.  He  not  only  refused  to 
grow  old  himself,  he  refused  to  write  about 
old  age.  There  are  a  few  elderly  people  in 
his  books,  but  they  are  vague  and  shadowy. 
They  serve  to  emphasize  the  brightness  of 
youth,  and  are  quickly  blown  away  when  the 
time  for  action  arrives.  But  if  he  numbered 
his  friends  and  acquaintances  by  the  thou 
sands  there  are  other  thousands  in  this  coun 
try  who  have  read  his  books,  and  they  know, 
even  better  than  those  who  were  acquainted 
with  him  personally,  how  good  a  friend  they 
[72] 


R.  H.  D. 

have  lost.  I  happened  to  read  again  the 
other  day  the  little  collection  of  stories — his 
first,  I  think — which  commences  with  "Gal 
legher"  and  includes  "The  Other  Woman" 
and  one  or  more  of  the  Van  Bibber  tales. 
His  first  stories  were  not  his  best.  He  in 
creased  in  skill  and  was  stronger  at  the  finish 
than  at  the  start.  But  "Gallegher"  is  a 
fine  story,  and  is  written  in  that  eager, 
breathless  manner  which  was  all  his  own, 
and  which  always  reminds  me  of  a  boy  who 
has  hurried  home  to  tell  of  some  wonderful 
thing  he  has  seen.  Of  course  it  is  improb 
able.  Most  good  stories  are  and  practically 
all  readable  books  of  history.  No  old  news 
paper  man  can  believe  that  there  ever 
existed  such  a  "copy  boy"  as  Gallegher,  or 
that  a  murderer  with  a  finger  missing  from 
one  hand  could  escape  detection  even  in  a 
remote  country  village.  Greed  would  have 
urged  the  constable  to  haul  to  the  calaboose 
every  stranger  who  wore  gloves.  But  he 
managed  to  attach  so  many  accurate  details 
of  description  to  the  romance  that  it  leaves 
[  73  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

as  definite  an  impression  of  realism  as  any 
of  Mr.  Howells's  purposely  realistic  stories. 
The  sdene  in  the  newspaper  office,  the  pic 
ture  of  the  prize-fight,  the  mixture  of  toughs 
and  swells,  the  spectators  in  their  short  gray 
overcoats  with  pearl  buttons  (like  most 
good  story-tellers  he  was  strong  on  the 
tailoring  touch),  the  talk  of  cabmen  and 
policemen,  the  swiftness  of  the  way  the 
story  is  told,  as  if  he  were  in  a  hurry  to  let 
his  reader  know  something  he  had  actually 
seen — create  such  an  impression  of  truth 
that  when  the  reader  finishes  he  finds  him 
self  picturing  Gallegher  on  the  witness- 
stand  at  the  murder  trial  receiving  the 
thanks  of  the  judge.  And  he  wonders  what 
became  of  this  precocious  infant,  and  whether 
he  was  rewarded  in  time  by  receiving  the 
hand  of  the  sister  of  the  sporting  editor  in 
marriage. 

To  give  the  appearance  of  truth  to  the 
truth  is  the  despair  of  writers,  but  Mr. 
Davis  had  the  faculty  of  giving  the  appear 
ance  of  the  truth  to  situations  that  in  human 
experience  could  hardly  exist.  The  same 
[74] 


R.  H.  D. 

quality  that  showed  in  his  tales  made  him 
the  most  readable  of  war  correspondents. 
He  went  to  all  the  wars  of  his  youth  and 
middle  age  filled  with  visions  of  glorious 
action.  Where  other  correspondents  saw 
and  reported  evil-smelling  camps,  ghastly 
wounds,  unthinkable  suffering,  blunders, 
good  luck  and  bad  luck,  or  treated  the 
subject  with  a  mathematical  precision  that 
would  have  given  Clausewitz  a  headache, 
Davis  saw  and  reported  it  first  of  all  as  a 
romance,  and  then  filled  in  the  story  with 
human  details,  so  that  the  reader  came 
away  with  an  impression  that  all  these  heroic 
deeds  were  performed  by  people  just  like  the 
reader  himself,  which  was  exactly  the  truth. 
It  is  a  pity  that  the  brutality  of  the  Ger 
man  staff  officers  and  the  stupidity  of  the 
French  and  English  prevented  him  from 
seeing  the  actual  fighting  in  Flanders  and 
Picardy.  The  scene  is  an  ugly  one,  a  wallow 
of  blood  and  mire.  But  so  probably  were 
Agincourt  and  Crecy  when  you  come  to 
think  of  it,  and  Davis,  you  may  be  sure, 
would  have  illuminated  the  foul  battle-field 
[75] 


R.  H.  D. 

with  a  reflection  of  the  glory  which  must 
exist  in  the  breasts  of  the  soldiers. 

The  fact  is,  he  was  the  owner  of  a  most 
enviable  pair  of  eyes,  which  reported  to  him 
only  what  was  pleasant  and  encouraging. 
A  man  is  blessed  or  cursed  by  what  his  eyes 
see.  To  some  people  the  world  of  men  is  a 
confused  and  undecipherable  puzzle.  To 
Mr.  Davis  it  was  a  simple  and  pleasant 
pattern — good  and  bad,  honest  and  dishon 
est,  kind  and  cruel,  with  the  good,  the  honest, 
and  the  kind  rewarded;  the  bad,  the  dis 
honest,  and  the  cruel  punished;  where  the 
heroes  are  modest,  the  brave  generous,  the 
women  lovely,  the  bus-drivers  humorous; 
where  the  Prodigal  returns  to  dine  in  a  bor 
rowed  dinner-jacket  at  Delmonico's  with  his 
father,  and  where  always  the  Young  Man 
marries  the  Girl.  And  this  is  the  world  as 
much  as  Balzac's  is  the  world,  if  it  is  the 
world  as  you  see  it. 


BY   WINSTON   CHURCHILL 


ON  that  day  when  I  read  of  Mr.  Davis's 
sudden  death  there  came  back  to  me  a 
vivid  memory  of  another  day,  some  eighteen 
years  ago,  when  I  first  met  him,  shortly  after 
the  publication  of  my  first  novel.  I  was 
paying  an  over-Sunday  visit  to  Marion, 
that  quaint  waterside  resort  where  Mr. 
Davis  lived  for  many  years,  and  with  which 
his  name  is  associated.  On  the  Monday 
morning,  as  the  stage  started  out  for  the 
station,  a  young  man  came  running  after 
it,  caught  it,  and  sat  down  in  the  only  empty 
place — beside  me.  He  was  Richard  Hard 
ing  Davis.  I  recognized  him,  nor  shall  I 
forget  that  peculiar  thrill  I  experienced  at 
finding  myself  in  actual,  physical  contact 
with  an  author.  And  that  this  author 
should  be  none  other  than  the  creator  of 
Gallegher,  prepossessing,  vigorous,  rather 
than  a  dry  and  elderly  recluse,  made  my 
excitement  the  keener.  It  happened  also, 
after  entering  the  smoking-car,  that  the  re 
maining  vacant  seat  was  at  my  side,  and 
[79] 


R.  H.  D. 

here  Mr.  Davis  established  himself.  He 
looked  at  me,  he  asked  if  my  name  was 
Winston  Churchill,  he  said  he  had  read  my 
book.  How  he  guessed  my  identity  I  did 
not  discover.  But  the  recollection  of  our 
talk,  the  strong  impression  I  then  received 
of  Mr.  Davis's  vitality  and  personality,  the 
liking  I  conceived  for  him — these  have 
neither  changed  nor  faded  with  the  years, 
and  I  recall  with  gratitude  to-day  the  kind 
liness,  the  sense  of  fellowship  always  so 
strong  in  him  that  impelled  him  to  speak  as 
he  did.  A  month  before  he  died,  when  I 
met  him  on  the  train  going  to  Mt.  Kisco, 
he  had  not  changed.  His  enthusiasms,  his 
vigor,  his  fine  passions,  his  fondness  for  his 
friends,  these,  nor  the  joy  he  found  in  the 
pursuit  of  his  profession,  had  not  faded. 
And  there  come  to  me  now,  as  I  think  of 
him  filled  with  life,  flashes  from  his  writings 
that  have  moved  me,  and  move  me  inde 
scribably  still.  "Le  Style"  as  Holland  re 
marks,  "c'est  rame"  It  was  so  in  Mr. 
Davis's  case.  He  had  the  rare  faculty  of 
[80] 


R.  H.  D. 

stirring  by  a  phrase  the  imaginations  of 
men,  of  including  in  a  phrase  a  picture,  an 
event — a  cataclysm.  Such  a  phrase  was 
that  in  which  he  described  the  entry  of  Ger 
man  hosts  into  Brussels.  He  was  not  a 
man,  when  enlisted  in  a  cause,  to  count  the 
cost  to  himself.  Many  causes  will  miss  him, 
and  many  friends,  and  many  admirers,  yet 
his  personality  remains  with  us  forever,  in 
his  work. 


[81 


BY  LEONARD  WOOD 


THE  death  of  Richard  Harding  Davis  was 
a  real  loss  to  the  movement  for  preparedness. 
Mr.  Davis  had  an  extensive  experience  as  a 
military  observer,  and  thoroughly  appreci 
ated  the  need  of  a  general  training  system 
like  that  of  Australia  or  Switzerland  and  of 
thorough  organization  of  our  industrial  re 
sources  in  order  to  establish  a  condition  of 
reasonable  preparedness  in  this  country.  A 
few  days  before  his  death  he  came  to  Gov 
ernor's  Island  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining 
in  what  line  of  work  he  could  be  most  useful 
in  building  up  sound  public  opinion  in  favor 
of  such  preparedness  as  would  give  us  a 
real  peace-insurance.  His  mind  was  bent 
on  devoting  his  energies  and  abilities  to  the 
work  of  public  education  on  this  vitally  im 
portant  subject,  and  few  men  were  better 
qualified  to  do  so,  for  he  had  served  as  a 
military  observer  in  many  campaigns. 

Throughout  the  Cuban  campaign  he  was 
attached  to  the  headquarters  of  my  regi 
ment  in  Cuba  as  a  military  observer.  He 
[85  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

was  with  the  advanced  party  at  the  opening 
of  the  fight  at  Las  Guasimas,  and  was  dis 
tinguished  throughout  the  fight  by  coolness 
and  good  conduct.  He  also  participated  in 
the  battle  of  San  Juan  and  the  siege  of  San 
tiago,  and  as  an  observer  was  always  where 
duty  called  him.  He  was  a  delightful  com 
panion,  cheerful,  resourceful,  and  thoughtful 
of  the  interests  and  wishes  of  others.  His 
reports  of  the  campaign  were  valuable  and 
among  the  best  and  most  accurate. 

The  Plattsburg  movement  took  very  strong 
hold  of  him.  He  saw  in  this  a  great  in 
strument  for  building  up  a  sound  knowledge 
concerning  our  military  history  and  policy, 
also  a  very  practical  way  of  training  men 
for  the  duties  of  junior  officers.  He  realized 
fully  that  we  should  need  in  case  of  war 
tens  of  thousands  of  officers  with  our  newly 
raised  troops,  and  that  it  would  be  utterly 
impossible  to  prepare  them  in  the  hurry  and 
confusion  of  the  onrush  of  modern  war. 
His  heart  was  filled  with  a  desire  to  serve 
his  country  to  the  best  of  his  ability.  His 
recent  experience  in  Europe  pointed  out  to 
[86  1 


R.  H.  D. 

him  the  absolute  madness  of  longer  disre 
garding  the  need  of  doing  those  things  which 
reasonable  preparedness  dictates,  the  things 
which  cannot  be  accomplished  after  trouble 
is  upon  us.  He  had  in  mind  at  the  time  of 
his  death  a  series  of  articles  to  be  written 
especially  to  build  up  interest  in  universal 
military  training  through  conveying  to  our 
people  an  understanding  of  what  organiza 
tion  as  it  exists  to-day  means,  and  how  vitally 
important  it  is  for  our  people  to  do  in  time 
of  peace  those  things  which  modern  war 
does  not  permit  done  once  it  is  under  way. 

Davis  was  a  loyal  friend,  a  thorough 
going  American  devoted  to  the  best  inter 
ests  of  his  country,  courageous,  sympathetic, 
and  true.  His  loss  has  been  a  very  real  one 
to  all  of  us  who  knew  and  appreciated  him, 
and  in  his  death  the  cause  of  preparedness 
has  lost  an  able  worker  and  the  country  a 
devoted  and  loyal  citizen. 


87 


WITH  DAVIS  IN  VERA  CRUZ,  BRUS 
SELS,  AND  SALONIKA 

BY  JOHN  T.   McGUTCHEON 


IN  common  with  many  others  who  have 
been  with  Richard  Harding  Davis  as  cor 
respondents,  I  find  it  difficult  to  realize 
that  he  has  covered  his  last  story  and  that 
he  will  not  be  seen  again  with  the  men  who 
follow  the  war  game,  rushing  to  distant 
places  upon  which  the  spotlight  of  news  in 
terest  suddenly  centres. 

It  seems  a  sort  of  bitter  irony  that  he  who 
had  covered  so  many  big  events  of  world 
importance  in  the  past  twenty  years  should 
be  abruptly  torn  away  in  the  midst  of  the 
greatest  event  of  them  all,  while  the  story 
is  still  unfinished  and  its  outcome  undeter 
mined.  If  there  is  a  compensating  thought, 
it  lies  in  the  reflection  that  he  had  a  life  of 
almost  unparalleled  fulness,  crowded  to  the 
brim,  up  to  the  last  moment,  with  those  ex 
periences  and  achievements  which  he  par 
ticularly  aspired  to  have.  He  left  while  the 
tide  was  at  its  flood,  and  while  he  still  held 
supreme  his  place  as  the  best  reporter  hi  his 
country.  He  escaped  the  bitterness  of  see- 
f  91  1 


R.  H.  D. 

ing  the  ebb  set  in,  when  the  youth  to  which 
he  clung  had  slipped  away,  and  when  he 
would  have  to  sit  impatient  in  the  audience, 
while  younger  men  were  in  the  thick  of  great, 
world-stirring  dramas  on  the  stage. 

This  would  have  been  a  real  tragedy  in 
"Dick"  Davis's  case,  for,  while  his  body 
would  have  aged,  it  is  doubtful  if  his  spirit 
ever  would  have  lost  its  youthful  freshness 
or  boyish  enthusiasm. 

It  was  my  privilege  to  see  a  good  deal  of 
Davis  in  the  last  two  years. 

He  arrived  in  Vera  Cruz  among  the  first 
of  the  sixty  or  seventy  correspondents  who 
flocked  to  that  news  centre  when  the  situ 
ation  was  so  full  of  sensational  possibilities. 
It  was  a  time  when  the  American  newspaper- 
reading  public  was  eager  for  thrills,  and  the 
ingenuity  and  resourcefulness  of  the  corre 
spondents  in  Vera  Cruz  were  tried  to  the 
uttermost  to  supply  the  demand. 

In  the  face  of  the  fiercest  competition  it 
fell  to  Davis's  lot  to  land  the  biggest  story 
of  those  days  of  marking  time. 
f  92  1 


R.  H.  D. 

The  story  "broke"  when  it  became  known 
that  Davis,  Medill  McCormick,  and  Freder 
ick  Palmer  had  gone  through  the  Mexican 
lines  in  an  effort  to  reach  Mexico  City. 
Davis  and  McCormick,  with  letters  to  the 
Brazilian  and  British  ministers,  got  through 
and  reached  the  capital  on  the  strength  of 
those  letters,  but  Palmer,  having  only  an 
American  passport,  was  turned  back. 

After  an  ominous  silence,  which  furnished 
American  newspapers  with  a  lively  period  of 
suspense,  the  two  men  returned  safely  with 
wonderful  stories  of  their  experiences  while 
under  arrest  in  the  hands  of  the  Mexican 
authorities.  McCormick,  in  recently  speak 
ing  of  Davis  at  that  time,  said  that,  "as  a 
correspondent  in  difficult  and  dangerous 
situations,  he  was  incomparable — cheerful, 
ingenious,  and  undiscouraged.  When  the 
time  came  to  choose  between  safety  and 
leaving  his  companion  he  stuck  by  his  fel 
low  captive  even  though,  as  they  both  said, 
a  firing-squad  and  a  blank  wall  were  by  no 
means  a  remote  possibility." 
[93] 


R.  H.  D. 

This  Mexico  City  adventure  was  a  spec 
tacular  achievement  which  gave  Davis  and 
McCormick  a  distinction  which  no  other  cor 
respondents  of  all  the  ambitious  and  able 
corps  had  managed  to  attain. 

Davis  usually  "hunted"  alone.  He  de 
pended  entirely  upon  his  own  ingenuity  and 
wonderful  instinct  for  news  situations.  He 
had  the  energy  and  enthusiasm  of  a  be 
ginner,  with  the  experience  and  training  of 
a  veteran.  His  interest  in  things  remained 
as  keen  as  though  he  had  not  been  years  at 
a  game  which  often  leaves  a  man  jaded  and 
blase.  His  acquaintanceship  in  the  American 
army  and  navy  was  wide,  and  for  this  rea 
son,  as  well  as  for  the  prestige  which  his 
fame  and  position  as  a  national  character 
gave  him,  he  found  it  easy  to  establish 
valuable  connections  in  the  channels  from 
which  news  emanates.  And  yet,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  he  was  "on  his  own"  instead 
of  having  a  working  partnership  with  other 
men,  he  was  generous  in  helping  at  times  when 
he  was  able  to  do  so. 

[94] 


R.  H.  D. 

Davis  was  a  conspicuous  figure  in  Vera 
Cruz,  as  he  inevitably  had  been  in  all 
such  situations.  Wherever  he  went  he  was 
pointed  out.  His  distinction  of  appearance, 
together  with  a  distinction  in  dress,  which, 
whether  from  habit  or  policy,  was  a  valuable 
asset  in  his  work,  made  him  a  marked  man. 
He  dressed  and  looked  the  "war  correspon 
dent,"  such  a  one  as  he  would  describe  in 
one  of  his  stories.  He  fulfilled  the  popular 
ideal  of  what  a  member  of  that  fascinating 
profession  should  look  like.  His  code  of 
life  and  habits  was  as  fixed  as  that  of  the 
Briton  who  takes  his  habits  and  customs 
and  games  and  tea  wherever  he  goes,  no 
matter  how  benighted  or  remote  the  spot 
may  be. 

He  was  just  as  loyal  to  his  code  as  is  the 
Briton.  He  carried  his  bath-tub,  his  im 
maculate  linen,  his  evening  clothes,  his  war 
equipment — in  which  he  had  the  pride  of  a 
connoisseur — wherever  he  went,  and,  what 
is  more,  he  had  the  courage  to  use  the  eve 
ning  clothes  at  times  when  their  use  was 
[  95  1 


R.  H.  D. 

conspicuous.  He  was  the  only  man  who 
wore  a  dinner  coat  in  Vera  Cruz,  and  each 
night,  at  his  particular  table  in  the  crowded 
"Portales,"  at  the  Hotel  Diligencia,  he  was 
to  be  seen,  as  fresh  and  clean  as  though  he 
were  in  a  New  York  or  London  restaurant. 

Each  day  he  was  up  early  to  take  the 
train  out  to  the  "gap,"  across  which  came 
arrivals  from  Mexico  City.  Sometimes  a 
good  "story"  would  come  down,  as  when 
the  long-heralded  and  long-expected  arrival 
of  Consul  Silliman  gave  a  first-page  "fea 
ture"  to  all  the  American  papers. 

In  the  afternoon  he  would  play  water 
polo  over  at  the  navy  aviation  camp,  and 
always  at  a  certain  time  of  the  day  his 
"striker"  would  bring  him  his  horse  and  for 
an  hour  or  more  he  would  ride  out  along  the 
beach  roads  within  the  American  lines. 

After  the  first  few  days  it  was  difficult  to 
extract  real  thrills  from  the  Vera  Cruz 
situation,  but  we  used  to  ride  out  to  El 
Tejar  with  the  cavalry  patrol  and  imagine 
that  we  might  be  fired  on  at  some  point  in 
f  96  1 


R.  H.  D. 

the  long  ride  through  unoccupied  territory; 
or  else  go  out  to  the  "front,"  at  Legarto, 
where  a  little  American  force  occupied  a 
sun-baked  row  of  freight-cars,  surrounded  by 
malarial  swamps.  From  the  top  of  the  rail 
road  water-tank  we  could  look  across  to  the 
Mexican  outposts  a  mile  or  so  away.  It 
was  not  very  exciting,  and  what  thrills  we 
got  lay  chiefly  in  our  imagination. 

Before  my  acquaintanceship  with  Davis  at 
Vera  Cruz  I  had  not  known  him  well.  Our 
trails  didn't  cross  while  I  was  in  Japan  in 
the  Japanese-Russian  War,  and  in  the 
Transvaal  I  missed  him  by  a  few  days,  but 
in  Vera  Cruz  I  had  many  enjoyable  oppor 
tunities  of  becoming  well  acquainted  with 
him. 

The  privilege  was  a  pleasant  one,  for  it 
served  to  dispel  a  preconceived  and  not  an 
entirely  favorable  impression  of  his  char 
acter.  For  years  I  had  heard  stories  about 
Richard  Harding  Davis — stories  which  em 
phasized  an  egotism  and  self-assertiveness 
which,  if  they  ever  existed,  had  happily 
f  97  1 


R.  H.  D. 

ceased  to  be  obtrusive  by  the  time  I  got  to 
know  him. 

He  was  a  different  Davis  from  the  Davis 
whom  I  had  expected  to  find;  and  I  can 
imagine  no  more  charming  and  delightful 
companion  than  he  was  in  Vera  Cruz. 
There  was  no  evidence  of  those  qualities 
which  I  feared  to  find,  and  his  attitude  was 
one  of  unfailing  kindness,  considerateness, 
and  generosity. 

In  the  many  talks  I  had  with  him  I  was 
always  struck  by  his  evident  devotion  to  a 
fixed  code  of  personal  conduct.  In  his  writ 
ings  he  was  the  interpreter  of  chivalrous, 
well-bred  youth,  and  his  heroes  were  young, 
clean-thinking  college  men,  heroic  big-game 
hunters,  war  correspondents,  and  idealized 
men  about  town,  who  always  did  the  noble 
thing,  disdaining  the  unworthy  in  act  or 
motive.  It  seemed  to  me  that  he  was  model 
ling  his  own  life,  perhaps  unconsciously, 
after  the  favored  types  which  his  imagina 
tion  had  created  for  his  stories.  In  a  cer 
tain  sense  he  was  living  a  life  of  make- 
[98] 


R.  H.  D. 

believe,  wherein  he  was  the  hero  of  the 
story,  and  in  which  he  was  bound  by  his 
ideals  always  to  act  as  he  would  have  the 
hero  of  his  story  act.  It  was  a  quality  which 
only  one  could  have  who  had  preserved  a 
fresh  youthfulness  of  outlook  in  spite  of  the 
hardening  processes  of  maturity. 

His  power  of  observation  was  extraor 
dinarily  keen,  and  he  not  only  had  the  rare 
gift  of  sensing  the  vital  elements  of  a  situ 
ation,  but  also  had,  to  an  unrivalled  degree, 
the  ability  to  describe  them  vividly.  I 
don't  know  how  many  of  those  men  at  Vera 
Cruz  tried  to  describe  the  kaleidoscopic  life 
of  the  city  during  the  American  occupation, 
but  I  know  that  Davis's  story  was  far  and 
away  the  most  faithful  and  satisfying  pic 
ture.  The  story  was  photographic,  even  to 
the  sounds  and  smells. 

The  last  I  saw  of  him  in  Vera  Cruz  was 
when,  on  the  Utah,  he  steamed  past  the 
flagship  Wyoming,  upon  which  I  was  quar 
tered,  and  started  for  New  York.  The  Bat- 
tenberg  cup  race  had  just  been  rowed,  and 
[99] 


R.  H.  D. 

the  Utah  and  Florida  crews  had  tied.  As 
the  Utah  was  sailing  immediately  after  the 
race,  there  was  no  time  in  which  to  row  off 
the  tie.  So  it  was  decided  that  the  names  of 
both  ships  should  be  engraved  on  the  cup, 
and  that  the  Florida  crew  should  defend  the 
title  against  a  challenging  crew  from  the 
British  Admiral  Craddock's  flagship. 

By  the  end  of  June,  the  public  interest  in 
Vera  Cruz  had  waned,  and  the  corps  of  cor 
respondents  dwindled  until  there  were  only 
a  few  left. 

Frederick  Palmer  and  I  went  up  to  join 
Carranza  and  Villa,  and  on  the  26th  of  July 
we  were  in  Monterey  waiting  to  start  with 
the  triumphal  march  of  Carranza's  army 
toward  Mexico  City.  There  was  no  sign  of 
serious  trouble  abroad.  That  night  ominous 
telegrams  came,  and  at  ten  o'clock  on  the 
following  morning  we  were  on  a  train  headed 
for  the  States. 

Palmer  and  Davis  caught  the  Lusitania,  sail 
ing  August  4  from  New  York,  and  I  followed 
on  the  Saint  Paul,  leaving  three  days  later. 
[  100  1 


R.  H.  D. 

On  the  1 7th  of  August  I  reached  Brussels, 
and  it  seemed  the  most  natural  thing  in  the 
world  to  find  Davis  already  there.  He  was 
at  the  Palace  Hotel,  where  a  number  of 
American  and  English  correspondents  were 
quartered. 

Things  moved  quickly.  On  the  igth 
Irvin  Cobb,  Will  Irwin,  Arno  Dosch,  and 
I  were  caught  between  the  Belgian  and 
German  lines  in  Louvain;  our  retreat  to 
Brussels  was  cut,  and  for  three  days,  while 
the  vast  German  army  moved  through  the 
city,  we  were  detained.  Then,  the  army 
having  passed,  we  were  allowed  to  go  back 
to  the  capital. 

In  the  meantime  Davis  was  in  Brussels. 
The  Germans  reached  the  outskirts  of  the 
city  on  the  morning  of  the  2oth,  and  the  cor 
respondents  who  had  remained  in  Brussels 
were  feverishly  writing  despatches  describing 
the  imminent  fall  of  the  city.  One  of  them, 
Harry  Hansen,  of  the  Chicago  Daily  News, 
tells  the  following  story,  which  I  give  in  his 
words: 

[  101  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

"While  we  were  writing,"  says  Hansen, 
"Richard  Harding  Davis  walked  into  the 
writing-room  of  the  Palace  Hotel  with  a 
bunch  of  manuscript  in  his  hand.  With 
an  amused  expression  he  surveyed  the  three 
correspondents  filling  white  paper. 

1  'I  say,  men,'  said  Davis,  'do  you  know 
when  the  next  train  leaves  ? ' 

"  *  There  is  one  at  three  o'clock,'  said  a 
correspondent,  looking  up. 

'That  looks  like  our  only  chance  to  get 
a  story  out,'  said  Davis.  'Well,  we'll  trust 
to  that.' 

"The  story  was  the  German  invasion  of 
Brussels,  and  the  train  mentioned  was  con 
sidered  the  forlorn  hope  of  the  correspon 
dents  to  connect  with  the  outside  world — 
that  is,  every  correspondent  thought  it  to 
be  the  other  man's  hope.  Secretly  each  had 
prepared  to  outwit  the  other,  and  secretly 
Davis  had  already  sent  his  story  to  Ostend. 
He  meant  to  emulate  Archibald  Forbes,  who 
despatched  a  courier  with  his  real  manu 
script,  and  next  day  publicly  dropped  a 
bulky  package  in  the  mail-bag. 
F  102  1 


R.  H.  D. 

"Davis  had  sensed  the  news  in  the  oc 
cupation  of  Brussels  long  before  it  happened. 
With  dawn  he  went  out  to  the  Louvain 
road,  where  the  German  army  stood,  pre 
pared  to  smash  the  capital  if  negotiations 
failed.  His  observant  eye  took  in  all  the 
details.  Before  noon  he  had  written  a  com 
prehensive  sketch  of  the  occupation,  and 
when  word  was  received  that  it  was  under 
way,  he  trusted  his  copy  to  an  old  Flemish 
woman,  who  spoke  not  a  word  of  English, 
and  saw  her  safely  on  board  the  train  that 
pulled  out  under  Belgian  auspices  for  Ostend." 

With  passes  which  the  German  comman 
dant  in  Brussels  gave  us  the  correspondents 
immediately  started  out  to  see  how  far  those 
passes  would  carry  us.  A  number  of  us  left 
on  the  afternoon  of  August  28  for  Water 
loo,  where  it  was  expected  that  the  great 
clash  between  the  German  and  the  Anglo- 
French  forces  would  occur.  We  had  planned 
to  be  back  the  same  evening,  and  went  pre 
pared  only  for  an  afternoon's  drive  in  a 
couple  of  hired  street  carriages.  It  was 
seven  weeks  before  we  again  saw  Brussels. 
[  103  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

On  the  following  day  (August  24)  Davis 
started  for  Mons.  He  wore  the  khaki  uni 
form  which  he  had  worn  in  many  cam 
paigns.  Across  his  breast  was  a  narrow  bar 
of  silk  ribbon  indicating  the  campaigns  in 
which  he  had  served  as  a  correspondent. 
He  so  much  resembled  a  British  officer 
that  he  was  arrested  as  a  British  derelict 
and  was  informed  that  he  would  be  shot  at 
once. 

He  escaped  only  by  offering  to  walk  to 
Brand  Whitlock,  in  Brussels,  reporting  to 
each  officer  he  met  on  the  way.  His  plan 
was  approved,  and  as  a  hostage  on  parole 
he  appeared  before  the  American  minister, 
who  quickly  established  his  identity  as  an 
American  of  good  standing,  to  the  satisfac 
tion  of  the  Germans. 

In  the  following  few  months  our  trails 
were  widely  separated.  I  read  of  his  ar 
rest  by  German  officers  on  the  road  to  Mons ; 
later  I  read  the  story  of  his  departure  from 
Brussels  by  train  to  Holland — a  trip  which 
carried  him  through  Louvain  while  the  town 
[  104  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

still  was  burning;  and  still  later  I  read  that 
he  was  with  the  few  lucky  men  who  were  in 
Rheims  during  one  of  the  early  bombard 
ments  that  damaged  the  cathedral.  By 
amazing  luck,  combined  with  a  natural  news 
sense  which  drew  him  instinctively  to  critical 
places  at  the  psychological  moment,  he  had 
been  a  witness  of  the  two  most  widely  fea 
tured  stories  of  the  early  weeks  of  the  war. 

Arrested  by  the  Germans  in  Belgium,  and 
later  by  the  French  in  France,  he  was  con 
vinced  that  the  restrictions  on  correspon 
dents  were  too  great  to  permit  of  good  work. 

So  he  left  the  European  war  zone  with  the 
widely  quoted  remark:  "The  day  of  the  war 
correspondent  is  over." 

And  yet  I  was  not  surprised  when,  one 
evening,  late  in  November  of  last  year,  he 
suddenly  walked  into  the  room  in  Salonika 
where  William  G.  Shepherd,  of  the  United 
Press,  "Jimmy  Hare,"  the  veteran  war 
photographer,  and  I  had  established  our 
selves  several  weeks  before. 

The  hotel  was  jammed,  and  the  city,  with 
[  105] 


R.  H.  D. 

a  normal  capacity  of  about  one  hundred  and 
seventy-five  thousand,  was  struggling  to  ac 
commodate  at  least  a  hundred  thousand 
more.  There  was  not  a  room  to  be  had  in 
any  of  the  better  hotels,  and  for  several 
days  we  lodged  Davis  in  our  room,  a  vast 
chamber  which  formerly  had  been  the  main 
dining-room  of  the  establishment,  and  which 
now  was  converted  into  a  bedroom.  There 
was  room  for  a  dozen  men,  if  necessary,  and 
whenever  stranded  Americans  arrived  and 
could  find  no  hotel  accommodations  we 
simply  rigged  up  emergency  cots  for  their 
temporary  use. 

The  weather  in  Salonika  at  this  time,  late 
November,  was  penetratingly  cold.  In  the 
mornings  the  steam  coils  struggled  feebly  to 
dispel  the  chill  in  the  room. 

Early  in  the  morning  after  Davis  had  ar 
rived,  we  were  aroused  by  the  sound  of  vio 
lent  splashing,  accompanied  by  shuddering 
gasps,  and  we  looked  out  from  the  snug 
warmth  of  our  beds  to  see  Davis  standing  in 
his  portable  bath-tub  and  drenching  himself 
[  106  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

with  ice-cold  water.  As  an  exhibition  of 
courageous  devotion  to  an  established  cus 
tom  of  life  it  was  admirable,  but  I'm  not 
sure  that  it  was  prudent. 

For  some  reason,  perhaps  a  defective  cir 
culation  or  a  weakened  heart,  his  system 
failed  to  react  from  these  cold-water  baths. 
All  through  the  days  he  complained  of  feeling 
chilled.  He  never  seemed  to  get  thoroughly 
warmed,  and  of  us  all  he  was  the  one  who 
suffered  most  keenly  from  the  cold.  It  was 
all  the  more  surprising,  for  his  appearance 
was  always  that  of  a  man  in  the  pink  of 
athletic  fitness — ruddy-faced,  clear-eyed,  and 
full  of  tireless  energy. 

On  one  occasion  we  returned  from  the 
French  front  in  Serbia  to  Salonika  in  a  box 
car  lighted  only  by  candles,  bitterly  cold, 
and  frightfully  exhausting.  We  were  seven 
hours  in  travelling  fifty-five  miles,  and  we 
arrived  at  our  destination  at  three  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  Several  of  the  men  con 
tracted  desperate  colds,  which  clung  to  them 
for  weeks.  Davis  was  chilled  through,  and 
[  107  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

said  that  of  all  the  cold  he  had  ever  expe 
rienced  that  which  swept  across  the  Mac 
edonian  plain  from  the  Balkan  highlands 
was  the  most  penetrating.  Even  his  heavy 
clothing  could  not  afford  him  adequate  pro 
tection. 

When  he  was  settled  in  his  own  room  in 
our  hotel  he  installed  an  oil-stove  which 
burned  beside  him  as  he  sat  at  his  desk  and 
wrote  his  stories.  The  room  was  like  an 
oven,  but  even  then  he  still  complained  of 
the  cold. 

When  he  left  he  gave  us  the  stove,  and 
when  we  left,  some  time  later,  it  was  pre 
sented  to  one  of  our  doctor  friends  out  in  a 
British  hospital,  where  I'm  sure  it  is  doing 
its  best  to  thaw  the  Balkan  chill  out  of  sick 
and  wounded  soldiers. 

Davis  was  always  up  early,  and  his  energy 
and  interest  were  as  keen  as  a  boy's.  We 
had  our  meals  together,  sometimes  in  the 
crowded  and  rather  smart  Bastasini's,  but 
more  often  in  the  maelstrom  of  humanity 
that  nightly  packed  the  Olympos  Palace 
f  108  1 


R.  H.  D. 

restaurant.  Davis,  Shepherd,  Hare,  and  I, 
with  sometimes  Mr.  and  Mrs.  John  Bass, 
made  up  these  parties,  which,  for  a  period  of 
about  two  weeks  or  so,  were  the  most  en 
joyable  daily  events  of  our  lives. 

Under  the  glaring  lights  of  the  restaurant, 
and  surrounded  by  British,  French,  Greek, 
and  Serbian  officers,  German,  Austrian,  and 
Bulgarian  civilians,  with  a  sprinkling  of 
American,  English,  and  Scotch  nurses  and 
doctors,  packed  so  solidly  in  the  huge,  high- 
ceilinged  room  that  the  waiters  could  barely 
pick  their  way  among  the  tables,  we  hung 
for  hours  over  our  dinners,  and  left  only 
when  the  landlord  and  his  Austrian  wife 
counted  the  day's  receipts  and  paid  the 
waiters  at  the  end  of  the  evening. 

One  could  not  imagine  a  more  charming 
and  delightful  companion  than  Davis  during 
these  days.  While  he  always  asserted  that 
he  could  not  make  a  speech,  and  was  terrified 
at  the  thought  of  standing  up  at  a  banquet- 
table,  yet,  sitting  at  a  dinner-table  with  a 
few  friends  who  were  only  too  eager  to  listen 
f  109  1 


R.  H.  D. 

rather  than  to  talk,  his  stories,  covering 
personal  experiences  in  all  parts  of  the  world, 
were  intensely  vivid,  with  that  remarkable 
"holding"  quality  of  description  which  char 
acterizes  his  writings. 

He  brought  his  own  bread — a  coarse, 
brown  sort,  which  he  preferred  to  the  better 
white  bread — and  with  it  he  ate  great  quan 
tities  of  butter.  As  we  sat  down  at  the 
table  his  first  demand  was  for  "Mastika,"  a 
peculiar  Greek  drink  distilled  from  mastic 
gum,  and  his  second  demand  invariably  was 
"Du  beurre!"  with  the  "r's"  as  silent  as 
the  stars;  and  if  it  failed  to  come  at  once 
the  waiter  was  made  to  feel  the  enormity  of 
his  tardiness. 

The  reminiscences  ranged  from  his  early 
newspaper  days  in  Philadelphia,  and  skip 
ping  from  Manchuria  to  Cuba  and  Central 
America,  to  his  early  Sun  days  under  Arthur 
Brisbane;  they  ranged  through  an  endless 
variety  of  personal  experiences  which  very 
nearly  covered  the  whole  course  of  American 
history  in  the  past  twenty  years. 

Perhaps  to  him  it  was  pleasant  to  go  over 
[  110  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

his  remarkable  adventures,  but  it  could  not 
have  been  half  as  pleasant  as  it  was  to  hear 
them,  told  as  they  were  with  a  keenness  of 
description  and  brilliancy  of  humorous  com 
ment  that  made  them  gems  of  narrative. 

At  times,  in  OUT  work,  we  all  tried  our 
hands  at  describing  the  Salonika  of  those 
early  days  of  the  Allied  occupation,  for  it 
was  really  what  one  widely  travelled  British 
officer  called  it — "the  most  amazingly  in 
teresting  situation  I've  ever  seen" — but 
Davis's  description  was  far  and  away  the 
best,  just  as  his  description  of  Vera  Cruz 
was  the  best,  and  his  wonderful  story  of  the 
entry  of  the  German  army  into  Brussels 
was  matchless  as  one  of  the  great  pieces  of 
reporting  in  the  present  war. 

In  thinking  of  Davis,  I  shall  always  re 
member  him  for  the  delightful  qualities  which 
he  showed  in  Salonika.  He  was  unfailingly 
considerate  and  thoughtful.  Through  his 
narratives  one  could  see  the  pride  which  he 
took  in  the  width  and  breadth  of  his  per 
sonal  relation  to  the  great  events  of  the  past 
twenty  years.  His  vast  scope  of  experiences 
[  111  ] 


R.  H.  D. 

and  equally  wide  acquaintanceship  with  the 
big  figures  of  our  time,  were  amazing,  and  it 
was  equally  amazing  that  one  of  such  a  rich 
and  interesting  history  could  tell  his  stories 
in  such  a  simple  way  that  the  personal  ele 
ment  was  never  obtrusive. 

When  he  left  Salonika  he  endeavored  to 
obtain  permission  from  the  British  staff  to 
visit  Moudros,  but,  failing  in  this,  he  booked 
his  passage  on  a  crowded  little  Greek  steamer, 
where  the  only  obtainable  accommodation 
was  a  lounge  in  the  dining-saloon.  We  gave 
him  a  farewell  dinner,  at  which  the  Amer 
ican  consul  and  his  family,  with  all  the  other 
Americans  then  in  Salonika,  were  present, 
and  after  the  dinner  we  rowed  out  to  his 
ship  and  saw  him  very  uncomfortably  in 
stalled  for  his  voyage. 

He  came  down  the  sea  ladder  and  waved 
his  hand  as  we  rowed  away.  That  was  the 
last  I  saw  of  Richard  Harding  Davis. 


112 


RETURN     CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

TO—  ^      202  Main  Library 

LOAN  PERIOD  1 
HOME  USE 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

1  -month  loans  may  be  renewed  by  calling  642-3405 

6-month  loans  may  be  recharged  by  bringing  books  to  Circulation  Desk 

Renewals  and  recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  due  date 


lftQPUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 

AUB.lg1BW    - 

II  IM  f\    rf  1DAD 

JUNW  71992 

RECEIVED  BY 

<// 

1  1  IIU     A            -tj-tj-i  ji         1 

JUN  0  ^  1991 

CiRCOlATION  DBnt 

UG  1  1  1984 

Sty.  ft 

/z/// 

/ 

tiff 

1 

REC.CIK   JAN 

22  '85                          1 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 

FORM  NO.  DD6,  60m,  12/80        BERKELEY  CA  94720 

®$ 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


598281 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


